No free media in ‘new’ Afghanistan

This video says about itself:

EU censors own film on Afghan women prisoners

The official trailer for a banned documentary on Afghan women prisoners.

This video, recorded in England, says about itself:

Anti-war protesters gather in London. Demonstrators gather near the Afghanistan conference in London to demand troops leave the country.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was founded by the CIA in the USA.

However, even for media with links to organizations which torture, kill Afghan civilians with drones, lie etc., it is sometimes impossible to keep up a propaganda facade about a supposedly “new” “democratic” Afghanistan.

In a context where the world knows about the massive election fraud farce in Afghanistan, about NATO killing many Afghan civilians (first covered up, now uncovered by the WikiLeaks revelations), today we get this Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty item:

Afghan Government Shuts Down TV Station

July 28, 2010

KABUL — The Afghan cabinet has closed a private television station, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan reports.

The government’s closing on July 27 of the Emroz (Today) television channel, owned by Afghan parliament member Najibulla Kabuli, is unprecedented.

Kabuli told Radio Free Afghanistan by phone on July 27 that the government’s decision to shut down his TV station was politically motivated.

He said Emroz has been trying to reveal to viewers “Iran’s interference in Afghanistan‘s affairs.”

This may be one reason why Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty mentions this media censorship even though it damages the propaganda image of a “new” “democratic” Afghanistan. US war propaganda is very anti-Iran. To ignorant Islamophobic US Americans it may seem: “The Iranian government and the Afghan Taliban are both Muslim, so they’re both terrorist, and allies blah blah blah blah”. Not so. The Sunni Taliban see the Shiite Iranians as heretics, and vice versa. The Iranian government supports Shiites in Iran. While Sunni armed groups, seen as Al Qaeda-esque terrorists by the government, kill people in various Iranian provinces.

Kabuli accused some politicians and political parties of “pressuring Afghan President Hamid Karzai to close” the station.

Hakim Asher, the head of the Afghan government’s Center for Information and Media, told Radio Free Afghanistan that the decision to close Emroz was made “because the television channel was fueling religious tensions and harming national unity.”

Emroz has aired mainly recreational programs since 2008.

RFE’s radio station may be called Radio Free Afghanistan. But the real Afghanistan obviously is unfree under the Karzai puppet regime and NATO occupation.

From the Kabul Press site:

Censorship in Afghanistan: Death to journalists

New book by author and Kabul Press founder, Kamran Mir Hazar, details the sad history and current supression of Afghan media by Afghan leaders

Thursday 11 March 2010, by Robert Maier

Since the beginning of the Karzai regime in 2002, twenty Afghan journalists have been murdered, and more than 200 violent physical attacks against journalists have been logged. Scores have fled Afghanistan after receiving threats against them and their families. Journalists have been sentenced to death, and several remain in jail after being arrested for their work. Radio and television stations, print media, and Internet services have been attacked, blocked, damaged, and even burned to the ground by government and other politico-religious agents and gangs.

As dozens of governments around the world pour billions of dollars and 100,000+ troops into Afghanistan to defend the Karzai government, it is an appropriate time to explore the human rights and legal issues regarding censorship and freedom of the press there.

Kabulpress’ founder and editor-in-chief’s most recent book, “Censorship in Afghanistan” just published by Norway’s IP Plans e-Books addresses this issue in a thorough manner. Written in the Dari language, it is the first book to explore the systematic suppression of free speech in Afghanistan that has been a feature of its ruling authorities for hundreds of years. Kamran experienced censorship first hand when he established Kabulpress.org in 2004, which was aimed at revealing corruption in the Afghan government and NGOs who were mis-handling millions of development dollars flowing into Afghanistan. He was detained several times by government agents and received numerous anonymous warnings about his work. The Afghan Secret Service tried to bribe him as a paid informant before he finally fled to India, where he was granted political refugee status by the U.N. and re-settled in Norway.

There is a special focus on the administration of Hamid Karzai over the past nine years, when after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans hoped that a new era of freedom of speech was beginning. To the contrary, under the Karzai regime, the newly freed media has been suppressed through government statutes and actions, and violent extra-legal autocratic political and religion-based organizations, which the government has been unable or unwilling to control.

An influential Commons committee is to investigate the justification for British troops remaining in Afghanistan, MPs have announced: here.

Google teams up with CIA to fund “Recorded Future” startup monitoring websites, blogs & Twitter: here.